The head of former president Yahya Jammeh’s alternative treatment programme has told the TRRC commission to send experts to Senegalese capital, Dakar, to verify the authenticity of patients’ blood samples cured of HIV/AIDS.

This comes after the Commission’s lead counsel Essa Faal told Dr Mbow that Jammeh’s HIV/AIDs treatment programme was bogus and that patients were manipulated. 

Only for Dr Mbow to reply: “manipulation? I don’t think those laboratories will manipulate the results. Send your experts team to go there and bring you results; the whole world is watching.”

According to the medical doctor, a patient with 200 virus loads in their system were sent to a laboratory in Dakar and after 2 or 3 months, their blood sample was sent again and the result was “undetectable. It’s because of the medication [of Jammeh].”

However, lawyer Faal fired back at the witness saying: “we have spoken to several medical doctors here, it is elusive…”

“All of them are wrong. What they calling the RNA, there is no DNA, only the RNA. May in one cell there are 300 hundred…The human deficiency virus which cause the HIV/AIDS is a virus, the bacteria is there but is a pathogen. It’s completely eliminated once you don’t have the virus, it is eliminated,” Dr Mbow said.

“If there is no virus, it means you are cured from that ailment or disease. “

On Jammeh tramping on critics, Dr Mbowe ruled out the allegation “That is not true, I used to advise him. The programme is true.”

Reporting by Adama Makasuba